“I have to convince the experts,” says Greg Bear on his style of “hard” science fiction — novels based on existing and plausible science. “These are the guys that spend their all their time in labs doing tests. They know when it’s not going to work.” The idea for Bear’s latest work, Quantico, came to him while working alongside the FBI to devise real-life methods for combating terrorism. THAT is how hard Bear is.

But he noticed something, though: Among all these new ideas and new technologies, there was very little addressing domestic terrorism. With echoes of the 2001 Anthrax scare still ringing in his head, he set to work creating a world in which domestic terrorism is the chief fear in America and dangerous pathogens and viruses are being created, both deliberately and inadvertently, in basements all across the country. Bear’s ultimate question is, how do we as a nation combat something so nebulous when we can’t just go in and blow everything all up.

Watch the full interview.